‘In The Black Fantastic’ Is The Must-See Exhibition Of Summer 2022

On 29 June, the Hayward Gallery hosted the opening of the highly anticipated new exhibition In the Black Fantastic. Curated by Ekow Eshun, the writer, broadcaster and chair of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, it is the UK’s first exhibition dedicated to the work of Black artists who use the realm of the fantastical – including mythology, folklore, spiritual traditions, science fiction and Afrofuturism – to explore racial injustices and identity. In Eshun’s own words, it’s “a way of acknowledging, a way of looking at the racialised everyday beyond the constraints that the Western imaginary has put around Black beings, Black personhood and Black experiences.” He continues: “In a world where we are constantly, as Black people, subject to the fantasies and myths of others, one of the ways through for us is to embrace the fantastic. Not as an escape from reality, but as a way to explore further the possibilities and the imaginative reaches of our own experience of being. Essentially, In the Black Fantastic is about saying there is no finite criteria or barrier…